Watch Out for Possible Problems with Task Scheduler, Cacls, and Xcacls

For some time, I've been testing my scripts to ensure that they'll function correctly in Windows 2000. When I recently tested a few scripts on a server running Win2K Server Service Pack 1 (SP1), I ran into problems with three commonly used tools: Task Scheduler, Cacls, and Xcacls. Here are the details about those problems and the Microsoft hotfixes available to fix them.

The Task Scheduler Problems
If you schedule any scripts or tasks to run with the Task Scheduler (mstask.exe) in Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 5.0, your scripts or tasks might fail to run when scheduled or they might become hung in the Running state, as indicated on the Task Scheduler's GUI. These problems can occur if you're using IE 5.0's Task Scheduler on a server running Win2K Server, Windows NT Server 4.0, or Microsoft BackOffice Server 4.0. You need to watch for these symptoms:

• Scripts or tasks take much longer than usual to complete.
• Scripts or tasks don’t start at their scheduled time.
• Unexpected failures occur in scripts that you've executed successfully in the past.
• Clicking End Task doesn’t stop hung scripts or tasks.

To get the Task Scheduler to work again, you need to stop and restart the service. However, when I stopped and restarted it, the condition cleared only temporarily. Examination of the Task Scheduler logs didn't reveal any cause for these problems. The logs just showed the start time and the end time for when I stopped and restarted the service. . . .